Griffin leaned back in his chair. ‘As the captain says, Tom, that’s a mystery, but we suspect it came in the same way those guns are getting into Papua New Guinea.’
Mahisa frowned, the smile long gone. ‘More than seventeen thousand islands make up Indonesia and we don’t have the resources to patrol all of them. There are many ways to bring contraband into the country. Smuggling has long been a problem.’
‘Frankly, Jakarta is worried,’ said Griffin. ‘And so are we, along with the US, of course. We believe the embassy bombing is the entree.’
‘Has anyone claimed responsibility for it?’ Hardcastle asked.
‘No, and that concerns us greatly, Colonel,’ said Griffin, resting his chin on his knuckles. ‘Usually, when a bunch of lunatics does something this crazy, they put their hands up to claim it. Gives them publicity and credibility amongst all the other crazies. But not this time. We believe this is all just some kind of demonstration — a private signal. But to whom? And why?’
‘We were aware that Babu Islam had a training camp up in central Java,’ said Mahisa. ‘We raided it and those of several other groups as a matter of course after the bombing, but BI’s camp had been vacated. We are investigating internally to see if there was a tip-off from someone in the TNI, the army, but we don’t think that will lead us anywhere positive. Now, unfortunately, we have no idea where these people have gone. Their sudden disappearance is a further indication of their guilt, we believe.’
‘Was any evidence of bomb-making found there, in the camp?’ Monroe asked. ‘They’d need some reasonably sophisticated equipment to make the sort of device used at the embassy.’
‘No, nothing.’
‘Does that surprise you?’ Monroe asked. It surprised him.
‘Not really. The bomb could have been made anywhere.’
The CIA field agent shrugged. Okay, good point.
‘How many members does this group have?’ asked Ferallo.
‘We don’t know,’ said Mahisa, opening his hands out to emphasise the point. ‘There are many sympathisers scattered around, but they don’t wear badges of membership. We doubt they even know they belong to a group called Servants of God. This is the nature of what we’re dealing with.’
‘Sand,’ said Ferallo.
‘Pardon?’
‘Sand, through your fingers?’
‘Yes, exactly,’ the captain said.
‘So Duat has vanished?’ Hardcastle got in before Wilkes.
Mahisa nodded.
‘And what about Kadar Al-Jahani?’ asked Hardcastle.
Ferallo received a nod from Griffin. ‘Kadar has been positively identified at El Arish airport. We got a report in yesterday.’
‘Where’s that?’ asked Mahisa.
‘Egypt, Captain, just south of the border with Israel. It’s a holiday town. He apparently got into a Mercedes with Gaza plates,’ Ferallo said. ‘Shin Bet believes he’ll probably head to Ramallah in the West Bank. When he does, we’re going to catch up with him.’
‘Catch up?’ enquired Wilkes.
‘Kidnap,’ Monroe replied, putting Wilkes in the picture.
‘Everyone wants Kadar Al-Jahani. Washington and the Israelis have green-lighted the operation.’ The ASIS chief cleared his throat. ‘The CIA director called me just prior to this meeting. This is top priority.’ Privately, the ASIS D-G didn’t particularly like the maverick American bull-in-a-china-shop approach, but he recognised that terrorism was impossible to combat if the game was played by Marquis of Queensbury rules. The gloves had to come off. These people were street fighters and the new rules were no rules.
‘Sir, so this is to be a joint US — Israeli op?’ asked Monroe.
‘No, it’s an Israeli operation with USCENTCOM oversight. That’s you, Atticus, and one of our people. That’s why Colonel Hardcastle and Warrant Officer Wilkes are here.’ He turned to Hardcastle. ‘Andrew? What do you think?’
Ramallah, the West Bank, Israel? Wilkes hadn’t seen that coming.
‘I’ll be honest with you, sir,’ Hardcastle said, massaging his chin, ‘I don’t like it.’
‘Andrew, I know it’s not ideal. My people now carry weapons and can use them in self-defence, but our charter won’t allow us to launch offensive ops. The ball’s in your court. If you’re not prepared to write Tom’s orders, I can always ask the AFP or ASIO…’
‘I can see you have a problem, sir, but, with respect, the SAS aren’t in the kidnap business,’ said Hardcastle, who thought he caught more than a whiff of bureaucratic buck-passing in all of this.
‘I know what I’m asking here, Andrew,’ said Griffin, an edge of anger in his voice. ‘I don’t like to muck around like this but I’m not given any choice.’
‘Can’t the CIA handle this on their own, sir?’ the SAS officer asked.
‘Yes, of course, but we’re not happy about leaving it totally up to the US. If we abdicate all responsibility here, we’re concerned that we might get stuck with an unpleasant fait accompli by the Americans down the track. We need to continue to play a lead role in this. We found Kadar Al-Jahani in the first place. And it is our own backyard we’re trying to protect, after all. Call it participation insurance.’
‘So would we be the second division team on this, sir?’ asked Hardcastle.
‘No. Nailing Kadar Al-Jahani is our job.’
Wilkes found the discussion more than a little interesting. Here was Hardcastle giving the ASIS boss a difficult time of it. It was obvious the SAS lieutenant colonel didn’t want his men shat on by bureaucrats — not Griffin himself but the people behind the D-G — and Wilkes’s respect for the man soared.
‘And you think Tom’s the right man for the job?’ Hardcastle was not entirely convinced — not least because Wilkes had no experience in that part of the world — but he could see that people a lot further up the food chain had already made up their minds.
‘I’ve asked for Wilkes because he did a good job for us in the past. I guess it’s just bad luck that I can put a name to a face — his.’
The conversation had taken a turn that Wilkes found a little unsettling. He felt a bit like the runner-up in a beauty contest being discussed by the judges. But Hardcastle was correct, he probably wasn’t the right man for the job.
‘Personally, and with all due respect to the warrant officer, I think there are better qualified assets for this job,’ said the colonel, taking the words out of Wilkes’s mouth. ‘I won’t order Tom to do it.’
Okay, thought Wilkes, back to the beach. That’s not a bad outcome, is it? At the same time, he was a touch concerned that the CO didn’t have unconditional faith in his abilities.
‘He’ll have to volunteer.’
Shit! thought Wilkes.
‘Fair enough,’ said Griffin.
‘And what about those legal issues?’ said Hardcastle. ‘If they’re real, we can’t just ignore them. Whose uniform’s he going to wear?’
‘Sir,’ said Ferallo, ‘if I can suggest…a way round might be to consider putting the warrant officer on temporary secondment to the CIA.’
That option had already occurred to Griffin. It was a good idea, but he was nonetheless uncomfortable. Send an Australian to Israel to help America abduct a Middle Eastern terrorist? The whole idea was something no one would seriously have considered even eighteen months ago. Now, well, it almost seemed, if not exactly normal, then not entirely unreasonable either. Next question? Would Langley approve the secondment? They might. The Australian intelligence services had managed to present an early suspect for the bombing, and that gave ASIS some short-term clout with the American agency. And the CIA was under intense pressure to deliver. With all the terrorist warnings about, the US Congress was demanding to know how the agency had managed to let yet another attack slip through the cracks. The bottom line? Langley wanted a quick resolution, whatever it took.